PERIOD: JUNE - JULY The aim of this course is to stimulate awareness on research-by-design as the means to reframe socio-technical aspects of urban and environmental challenges. As a practice, design activity delves into man-made things (defined in literature as what characterizes material culture and/or the artificial world). Being related to the social definition of goals and functioning, design problems are recognised as ill-defined, ill-structured, or “wicked” [Simon, 1968; Rittel & Webber, 1973]. In this light, design has been conceptualized as a specific approach to reasoning: “Design has its own distinct ‘things to know, ways of knowing them, and ways of finding out about them’” and places at its core the language of “modelling” [Cross, 1982]. We adopt the definition of research-by-design as the actions of defining, redefining, and challenging the problem-as-given mindset – from the early stages of problem setting throughout the transformative attitude by which problems are addressed, up to the test and evaluation of possible applications. The course is targeted at PhD students from all backgrounds and requires no preliminary knowledge or experience in research-by-design. The goal of the course is to help students to develop by reflexive practice the capability of using research-by-design tools and methods in their specific research field. The course builds on the activities of FULL-Future Urban Legacy Lab, based at POLITO, that aims at providing knowledge and action in the field of relevant global urban challenges and support to local decision-making processes. The course is programmed together with the “Socio-technical Urbanization” course, which is offered as part of the URD PhD Programme.

After an initial seminar on the theoretical and methodological references for applying “research-by-design” to urban and environmental challenges, participants to this course will have the opportunity to explore on field “research-by-design” with expert practitioners operating in real processes in Europe (building on the 2018 experience at BMA-Brussels and IABR-Rotterdam). PhD candidates will be invited to reflect upon their uses of design in research matter, particularly discussing whether a 'designerly way' of thinking exists in the way knowledge is enhanced, consolidated, shared or falsified by-design in their research work.

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Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.